EU aid to Egypt to continue

The European Union has no imminent plans to rethink its aid to Egypt after the country’s military deposed Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely-elected president, in a coup yesterday.

A spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said in Brussels today (4 July): “I am not aware of any urgent plans to rethink our aid programmes at the moment but the dust is still settling on what happened last night.”

He declined to be drawn on whether yesterday’s events constituted a military coup and said the question was “semantic”. “We are not in favour of military intervention in politics,” he said. But neither he nor any other official condemned the coup or asked for Morsi to be reinstated.

Elmar Brok, the chair of the European Parliament’s foreign-affairs committee, today said that Morsi’s ousting might give the Egyptian people “an important new opportunity to establish a true democracy” and that Morsi had been incapable of delivering on his promises.

Martin Schulz, the Parliament’s president, said: “Democracy, civilian rule and civil rights must return as soon as possible to the country and this must be achieved through a clear electoral calendar and a process which is peaceful, inclusive and transparent.”

Ashton’s spokesman said: “The most important thing to underline is that there has to be an inclusive process in Egypt and a return as soon as possible to the full democratic process.”

Ashton said in a statement last night: “I urge all sides to rapidly return to the democratic process, including the holding of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections and the approval of a constitution, to be done in a fully inclusive manner, so as to permit the country to resume and complete its democratic transition.”

The spokesman stressed that Egypt’s treasury this year receives no direct budget support and that most project funding is disbursed through groups that are independent of the government.

Some €5 billion in loans and grants pledged by the EU-Egypt taskforce last November remain in line to be disbursed, the spokesman said. “The €5bn pledged at the taskforce… will come on stream when it comes on stream, there are different sources and different deadlines and different timetables,” he said.

A report from the European Court of Auditors last month described the EU’s aid to Egypt before and after the popular uprising which deposed the country’s long-time leader, Hosni Mubarak, two years ago as “well-intentioned but ineffective”. It noted that the main human-rights programme has had little impact and was largely unsuccessful.

The report criticised the European Commission and the EU’s diplomatic service for failing to use their financial and political leverage with the authorities to address shortcomings.